Canara Bank expects about Rs 1,200-crore business this year from its 150 financial inclusion branches in the country, according to a top official.

The bank is treating financial inclusion as a business opportunity, Ms Archana S. Bhargava, Executive Director, Canara Bank, told Business Line . “We expect that the 150 branches opened would be able to provide about Rs 1,200-crore business in a span of one year,” she said.

The bank currently has 40 financial inclusion branches in the country, and plans to take it up to 125 by end-September. Each branch is expected to open about 1,000 accounts. The bank plans to recruit 500 agricultural graduates as rural officers, of which, about 160 are already working in the field.

Ms Bhargava pointed out that the bank has issued over 92,000 smart-cards under its financial inclusion programme, of which, 37,000 cards were issued in Karnataka. Of these, 1,475 cards were issued in three model villages — Koira and Gollahalli (Bangalore rural), and Dodda Agrahara (Tumkur), under the meaningful and holistic financial inclusion programme, she added.

“The target is to issue five lakh smart cards across the country by the fiscal-end,” she said.

Priority-sector advances

As of June 2011, the bank's priority sector advances stood at Rs 71,000 crore, constituting over 40 per cent of the net credit. It has disbursed 4.72 lakh kisan credit-cards (KCCs) this year amounting to Rs 4,118 crore.

Under the self-help group linkage, “we have so far linked 3.26 lakh groups disbursing Rs 2,000 crore. The advances outstanding under the SHG linkage programme is Rs 1,060 crore benefiting 88,000 groups,” pointed out Ms Bhargava.

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